A few thousand years ago, Moses (whom Freud identified as likely to have been a monotheistic Egyptian nobleman) led the Hebrews out of Egypt. A year ago, Hamas blew up the much-hated wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt with explosives, after secretly over months cutting heavy metal using oxyacetylene torches. Some three hundred and fifty thousand Gazans poured into Egypt’s Rafah town and market to buy food, medicine, cigarettes, petrol, cows, goats, sheep, camel, televisions, mobile phones etc. Israel’s wicked blockade of Gaza was broken. Hosni Mubarak apparently instructed Egyptian border guards not to resist the Palestinian crowds from entering Egypt, and stated that as long as they returned without weapons they were free to trade as they wished. Egypt could hardly have done anything else – Cairo had seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations and Mubarak’s police had arrested some 500 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The official Israeli response was “the free passage of Palestinians into Egypt and back, without any supervision, significantly increases the threat coming from the Strip”. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said “it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly, according to the signed agreements. We expect the Egyptians to solve the problem. Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter.” But Egypt can hardly solve this problem other than by offering to extend Egyptian sovereignty to the whole of the Gaza Strip. Something similar would have to be done with the West Bank becoming absorbed officially into Jordan. The Palestinian people would then not have their own state after all but have been divided between the formal territories of Egypt, Jordan and of course Israel itself (is not Israel technically a secular country without a state religion?). Gaza and the West Bank could be autonomous regions within Egyptian and Jordanian sovereignty respectively. The Palestinians at least would be able to buy flour and have normal lives and not have been made to live in the open-air prison that they do now. The people of Gaza would have been spared the Israeli atrocity that has been going on in the last several weeks.

There are and have been uncountable quasi-nationalities who have not had their own nation-states. Kurds are divided between Turkey, Iraq and Iran; Baloch are divided between Iran and Pakistan; Pashtuns are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan; Kashmiris (and for that matter Punjabis and Sindhis) are divided between Pakistan and India; Bengalis are divided between India and Bangladesh; Tamils are divided between India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore; Tibetans are divided between India and China etc etc, and that is only in half of Asia. There are multitudinous cases all over Europe (and Britain), Africa and also the Americas and elsewhere. The Palestinians would have become one such. And like Poland being divided between Germany and Russia, or between Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia even earlier (on this see the inimitable Joseph Conrad Notes on Life and Letters), a people who have been divided without a separate identity can sometimes find themselves independent again as history progresses.

Islamic Iran has wished a “one-state” solution with the Palestinians and Israelis living together harmoniously, something that seems utopian at best, devious at worst — though recall too Martin Buber’s letter to Tagore. British foreign policy invented the “two-state” solution ever since the Balfour declaration. It has proved infeasible. Tony Blair became the so-called “Quartet envoy” or whatever immediately after being UK prime minister and was supposed to herald in the two-state solution. He palpably failed and should have resigned when Israel attacked Gaza last month but that may have been too much to expect. Israel today seems to want to impose the “zero-state” solution by extinguishing Gaza (though at one time, pre-PLO and pre-Arafat perhaps, Israel may have proposed itself the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank by Egypt and Jordan respectively).

All things considered, the “three-state” solution may be the only practical and civilized alternative in the circumstances. Palestine would indeed be remembered, as a place and a culture and a people, and at least the Palestinians would be able to live and thrive and not be attacked.

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